


Within Reach

by kenthel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, intense hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5744524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenthel/pseuds/kenthel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kageyama Tobio and Hinata Shouyou are friends and share an apartment together.  Also, Kageyama has an obsession with Hinata's hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within Reach

**Author's Note:**

> Because even the gentlest beginnings would be taken too seriously by someone like Kageyama.

Every fiber of Kageyama Tobio’s being screamed for him to take Hinata Shouyou’s hand. It sat there, fingers curled in the blanket between them. One of the knuckles had cracked from the dry winter air. It was red, angry, and undeserving of marring that relaxed, pliable hand. 

But they weren’t like that. They were great friends. Roommates. Teammates. Classmates. Rivals. None of these relationships gave Kageyama the right to reach out and slowly spread the warm fingers apart and sink his own against their webbing. He stared down at an uneven cuticle on the ring finger. The finger twitched under his scrutiny.

There were only so many cooking programs Kageyama could watch before his mind started to wander. Every counted wrinkle of Hinata’s finger brought Kageyama’s resolve closer to the brink of foolish, hideous courage. The heated murmur of exchange between his hand and Hinata’s would be all it took for the card castle of their titles to fall flat.

“So tired.” Hinata yawned. His hand coyly covered his gaping mouth and impaired the sweetened sleepiness of his voice.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Maybe bed,” Hinata considered.

Settled an excruciating couple of centimeters closer than before, the tip of the capriciously curved pinky laid half shadowed and begging to be caressed by Kageyama’s own.

Kageyama’s eyelids fought against him with a weight incomparable to the one provided by gravity. His thoughts were a whimsical maze of mist and peach skin. He imagined the electric sliding of fingernails scratching down his wrist and digging into his palm. He regained control and attempted to glare at the unloyal eyelashes that sat matted together with congealed eye dust and grogginess.

An infomercial played. Then, a jingle of a phone number. A blue backdrop soaked the room azure and washed their skin the color of veins.

Hianta’s head had lolled back onto the couch, mouth poised open enough to seat a songbird. His chest raised like the gentlest flow of the ocean with foamless waves. He wore a shirt that Kageyama had purchased for him. The sight always tickled Kageyama pink with happiness.

Hinata was defenseless. That hand invited inspections with its unsquared, anxiously torn nails, and untold tales woven into barely visible white scars. These opportunities presented themselves often: afternoon naps in the armchair, early pass outs after one drink too many while slumped against the couch, study breaks facedown in a science textbook at the kitchen table with a lukewarm mug of coffee loosely clutched by beautiful, languid fingers.

Kageyama cringed at himself. The satisfaction of staring was diluted by every passed up moment. The store of memories clumped together into a great clot of unrequited desire to touch. Kageyama wanted to have the unquenchable fire seep warmth from his fingertips onto the back of that smaller, impermeable hand.

Kageyama shook Hinata by the shoulder. He grumbled, “Can you ever learn to use your own bed?”

Hinata’s head drooped forward, mouth smacking sounds of confused weariness in vowels without words. 

 

It was quiet with the TV off and the separate doors of their bedrooms closed like expelling barriers. Kageyama’s breath echoed against the blankets drawn over his face as he attempted to smother the unrelenting, deafening swells of his heart.

 

The prankster projectionist took great glee as he poured snapshots of Hinata’s hands over the film reel of Kageyama’s dreams. A flash of a pencil that was held too tightly. The topmost knuckles were bone white from the exertions of furious writing. Another was a freeze frame of motion. The palm was abnormally rippled with impact as the hand struck a volleyball with silent reverberation that Kageyama felt rattle his soul. Lastly, they were splayed out erotically flat against the wall, one hand higher than the other. The outwards curve of proud middle fingers were center frame as Hinata helped Kageyama hang a poster.

Then, a delusion rolled as opposed to a memory.

A ghost of a hand slithered between Kageyama’s sheets and clung to his hidden, waiting fingers that accepted its coldness all too easily. The hidden phantom clamped around the love exuding from Kageyama’s desperate palm and sapped the heat from him. Afterwords, he felt drained like a husk as the embrace of the dream dissipated.

 

The next morning, Hinata’s unknowingly seductive fingerpads circled the brim of his coffee cup as steam rose. Kageyama forced his greedy gaze away to refuse his mind’s artist more fuel for nightly torture.

“Sleep well?” Hinata asked.

Kageyama settled in the chair across the table, wiping his eyes. “More or less.”

“I had the craziest dream last night,” Hinata began. He held a hand against his forehead like he was skeptical himself.

Kageyama drank in Hinata’s convoluted night time tale. He leeched light from Hinata’s eyes and momentum from the illustrating hands that tried to sculpt the alternate reality. The story ended, but the excitement lingered in honeyed brown eyes opened so fantastically wide.

“I don’t know how your brain makes such crazed stuff up,” Kageyama remarks. But I want to, he thought to himself.

Hinata smiled and the glittering dust motes suspended between them froze midair. Kageyama clicked his jaw shut to suppress the gasp that throttled his chest.

“I don’t know either, “ Hinata said. The sound waves disturbed the stasis and the air returned to circulating.

“Do you remember your dream?” Hinata asked, leaning forward with his chin propped upon on relaxed fists.

“You were there,” Kageyama admitted. He couldn’t ever disgrace the sanctity of their kitchen table with trifle lies.

“What? Really?” His eyebrows raised with keen interest and a smirk toyed with the corners of his mouth.

Kageyama hummed to confirm.His articulation slipped and fumbled to smudge the truth. “I couldn’t tell if it was a nightmare.”

The wounded pout that followed made Kageyama want to suck his words back into his throat one misshapen vibration at a time.

“I’m not even scary,” Hinata protested, hands falling to wrap around his cooling mug. Eyes downcast and obscured by fine, wispy lashes, he mumbled, “Unlike some people.”

The insinuation was not lost on Kageyama. He favored the view of the window and scrub saturated woods over his company. He wrapped his arms protectively around his verbally puncture middle that threatened to leak pride and dark thoughts. His face prickled and flared with anger and embarrassment.

“That’s not how it was. It wasn’t scary. It was like, what if we weren’t friends like this anymore?”

Neutrality returned to Hinata’s features and he brought the mug to his lips, blew hard enough for sloppy waves of coffee to splash against the rim, and sipped. Something waved in his eyes, evanescent and enigmatic. They closed completely and shielded the glaze of emotion before it could be interpreted by Kageyama.

 

The day was another page falling helplessly from the calendar as winter vacation rolled on. The seconds danced miserably by to only be caught and pounded relentlessly into minutes and hours. Snow whirled playfully outside, dusting the streets, barren branches, and trudging walkers. 

Hinata was in the kitchen. A pot bubbled and sputtered contentedly over low heat. Wafts of cinnamon escaped as the cover wobbled. A knife, too dull for optimal effectiveness, chewed through hard, crisp vegetables and lodged into the wood of the cutting board.

Kageyama read while spread across the couch. The same sentence was lost for the third time in a row to a worried glance. He was making sure no tips of fingers were hacked by that monstrosity of a blade.

Two and a half hours of hovering and over stirring past. The little utterances of confusion and disappointment became amused. The fire’s fuel was cut with the turn of a knob. Kageyama moved his bookmark, an old post it wishing him luck on an exam from Hinata, twenty pages over from where it previously rested.

Hinata stood over the table holding two bowls, pleased as punch. Happiness crinkled the corners of his eyes while his hair was still confined in a thick, black athletic band.

Hinata offered, “Say, Kageyama, want some?”

“Yeah, ah, if you don’t mind,” Kageyama replied. He shook the malaise from himself before standing. “It smells great.”

“Well, they say smell is half the taste anyway,” Hinata said, handing him a bowl and a spoon.

“Think it’d be good for bread dunking?” Kageyama wondered aloud, inspecting the brown stew and swallowing excess saliva that pooled under his tongue.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Hinata agreed. His words were wrapped around a spoon he hadn’t hesitated to pop piping hot into his mouth. He fanned his scalded tongue and flushed red.

A poured glass of carton lemon tea and presented loaf of unopened bread later, Hinata recovered. His color faded as he gulped tea. 

“You’re a lifesaver, Kageyama.” Hinata tore a chunk from a slice of bread and sopped up the thick gravy.

Kageyama’s heart became fickle and frantic from the praise, like a fire battling the wind. He muttered a bland compliment in return regarding the quality of the food. The food couldn’t be another less than delicious if Hinata had tried, but Kageyama hadn’t dared state something so bold.

 

The room grew dark. It was the time of afternoon where the interior lights added only tinted ambiance instead of clarity to the room. The snow continued to fall, impossibly quiet as immense conglomerates of flakes descended in ever-growing, spreading layers.

Kageyama washed their dishes, squinting into the obscurity caused by his own shadow.

Hinata sat on the couch exactly in the middle with his legs criss-cross. He flipped absently through the channels. His face pulled itself in each direction with excitement at one show - eyebrows up, jaw down, lips smiling, and teeth showing.

Nestled far into the arm of the couch, Kageyama joined him. His book rested in his lap. The room was a notch too dim to comfortably make out the words. An obnoxiously loud series of commercials made Kageyama glare at the screen.

Hinata lowered the volume.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized sheepishly. He set the remote down between them and his hand remained, lingering behind the hunk of plastic.

Kageyama’s throat constricted painfully. “Don’t worry about it,” he managed. He was surprised he had saved enough air to finish the brief sentence. His thoughts spiraled dread and hope and the unknown with well-practiced self doubt and defeatism. He swallowed to silence the taunting words jabbering in the forefront of his mind and slid his hand off the smoothness of the creamy paper onto the couch. The fabric tickled along his palm as he traversed the short distance to Hinata’s hand. Kageyama twitched away when his pinky brushed the nearest frowning knuckle. He feared being smitten on the spot.

No such strike streaked from the heavens. His hand covered Hinata’s and with his own forearm and wrist bearing the weight. Kageyama held his breath as lightning surged through his arm and arced from the points of contact between them.

Hinata moved his fingers and Kageyama’s knee jerk reaction was to startle away from him. What he suspected to be the beginning of idle protest was the hand turning under his. Rough fingertips imbued with simplistic grace threaded through the sensitive betweens of his fingers. The moment was overwhelming, itchy, and ticklish. A single cherishing tear formed in the corner of Kageyama’s eye as his joy overflowed.

They became engrossed in a secret conversation: slight squeezes that tied cords around Kageyama’s lassoed heart and intentional caresses with exploring thumbs. Kageyama sought and rubbed over each and every imperfection within his limited range. He wanted to commit the scars, the bits of loose skin hanging around the nails, and the long embedded splinters doomed to have been planted forever to memory. 

Hinata circled the tautest fiber that connected Kageyama’s thumb and forefinger. A fishing accident had robbed him of some flexibility in place of a nodule of white, tougher replacement skin. 

Having grown impatient with being pinned down, Hinata’s hand fastidiously unfurled from Kageyama’s. His fingers slid out wonderfully with the perfect absence of friction like a spirit’s breath, making the hairs on Kageyama’s arm lift away.

Fingertips explored the sensitive length of Kageyama’s forearm. Patterns became branded as those fingers skated on wayward fancy across his skin. Kageyama held back a hum of earnest appreciation and watched with unabashed attention. To Kageyama, that composing, masterful hand might as well have signed Hinata’s name in blood. He would have done anything under that magical, binding touch.

The show ended and the credits rolled abnormally fast. A next episode’s preview showed alongside. The stark transition to a brooding theme music shifted the tension in the room like a lever used to tug a harp string sharp.

Kageyama met Hinata’s eyes. They reflected the television more than the emotions playing in the shadow of his brow.

Hinata tapped his wrist twice, right over his struggling pulse. “This is new.”

Was Kageyama’s throat dry of saliva or of cautious words? “A good new or a bad new?”

“A good new, of course!” Hinata insisted, upper body angled completely towards Kageyama.

“You’re,” Kageyama said, pausing as the feather light script returned, “very skilled.”

“You don’t have to say it that way,” Hinata said. His fingers retracted up away from Kageyama’s forearm, but then knuckles took the place of fingertips. The thunderous palpitations of Kageyama’s overworked heart returned to full steam.

Kageyama tried again, whispering, “It’s nice. Really nice.”

Hinata took his hand, now. He gripped Kageyama’s knuckles together with an easy dexterity that brushed the margin before pain. Kageyama’s doubt of reality melted in his clutches. 

“I’ve wanted to do that forever,” Hinata muttered, perhaps to himself.

“Me too.”


End file.
